Search engines are essential for getting your site noticed; however, it is an enormous challenge to optimize your site when you don’t have the resources or tools necessary. With these tools, you can optimize your page both on and off site.

1. Google WebMaster Tools

Webmaster tools give you the ability to improve your target keywords for search results by providing indexing issues, keyword visibility, impressions, time spent on your site, average position of search terms, and the click through rate. You can even set up goals, such as converting a browser into a customer.

2. Google Insights for Search

Another great tool from Google is their Insights for Search tool. This allows you to input any keyword and see the distribution of how heavily that keyword is searched in areas, ranging from the whole globe down to the city level. Insights also provides a list of other relevant terms that gain search traction for that topic.

3. URI Valet

URI Valet is the Swiss Army Knife of SEO. This tool is great for performing technical audits and gives the user statistics on server headers, the time it takes to download, internal links, external links, object details, as well as a text to HTML ratio.

4. Xenu’s Link Sleuth

Another great tool for site audits that downloads directly to your desktop is Xenu’s Link Sleuth. This tool analyzes your site and gives you a report on any broken links, lost mail servers, and the type of code that is being used on specific pages. Not only is this tool great for site audits, but can be an amazing resource when scraping your site for link building opportunities.

5. SEO Browser

SEO Browser breaks down a web page into a text file that easily allows you to see the layout of the page, from the title tag to the H1 headers and so on. This is a great tool when looking for a quick report on page structure information.

6. Rank Checker

When you want to check multiple rankings and have little time, the Rank Checker tool offers a quick and easy interface that allows you to check where a site ranks on Google. This tool runs directly off your browser, which can pose a couple problems. One, localization of search results can affect true search results, and two, if you are signed into a personal browser account, it will use your previous browsing history and tendencies. Negatives aside, this is a great tool for quickly checking where sites rank for the keyword you input.

7. SEO Toolbar from SEOmoz

Possibly my personal favorite of all the SEO tools I use is the MozBar. This tool gives you an instant look at the page authority and domain authority of the page you are on and even offers an in depth link analysis for anyone mining for quality links.

8. Shared Count

Shared count moves away from the traditional SEO techniques and into the social side of SEO. Shared count gives the user the numbers of Facebook likes, Tweets, Google +1’s, Diggs, LinkedIn shares, Google Buzz’s, and stumbles on StumbleUpon. Not only does it show your social status, but it has an open API so you can build specific tools to build on your social statistics.

Building a high-ranking site not only involves onsite metrics, but finding great linking opportunities outside of your site. With these amazing tools and some practice, you can start building awareness through optimizing your current webpage as well as finding great off site linking opportunities.

When it comes to finances, women and men are alike in one way: According to a recent survey of married couples, about one-third of respondents said they had lied to their spouse about money–hiding purchases, keeping secret accounts or lying about their earnings. Men and women were equally guilty of subterfuge.

When it comes to spending household money, however, it’s a different story. Here gender makes a significant difference.

In Bangladesh, Nobel Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus, creator of the micro-credit phenomenon, has found that women not only repay loans more often than men, but that when women control the money, their families were more likely to benefit from the income.

And a study in the Philippines reported that when women have control over a couple’s savings accounts, expenditures shift towards the purchase of family-targeted durable goods, such as washing machines or kitchen appliances.

In the traditional view of economists, all money is interchangeable, seamlessly fungible, and “free” from social or cultural influences. All that matters is how much money, not which money or whose money.

But money is far from impersonal. A growing body of research by sociologists and behavioral economists finds a dazzling array of cognitively, culturally and socially distinct ways in which people approach money. Some of the most intriguing differences are in the ways that women and men approach spending–and those studies are already influencing how some policy-makers and organizations around the world allocate their funds.

Last year, for instance, Haitian authorities distributed food vouchers only to women in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. They said the food would be more likely to be divided equitably within the household this way than if men got the vouchers. And Oportunidades, Mexico’s innovative anti-poverty program, successfully targets its cash transfers to mothers, conditional on their children’s school attendance and health clinic visits by family members. Follow-up studies find that the money usually goes for food, children’s clothes and school supplies.

The pattern seems to transcend generations. A study by MIT economist Esther Duflo finds similar results comparing South African grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ usage of their old-age pension funds. And it’s not just a peculiar feature of developing economies. Sociologist Catherine Kenney reports that in low- to moderate-income two-parent U.S. households, children are less likely to experience food insecurity when their parents’ pooled income is controlled by their mother rather than their father.

So why is it that a mother’s money is more likely to be earmarked for her child’s well-being than the same amount of money in a man’s hands? Some might invoke genetic predispositions to caring, or a strategic advantage women get from investing in their children (anticipating, for instance, their child’s economic support in their old age). But neither of those explanations goes far enough.

Culture matters and so do social ties. Women are often held to higher standards of morality in spending. Despite jokes about women as spendthrifts, mothers (and grandmothers) are expected to consider their children’s needs as paramount. Selfless spending becomes a hallmark of moral virtue.

Kin, friends and other relations reinforce cultural expectations. In their study of a group of low-income single moms in the Philadelphia area, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas observed a “norm of self-sacrifice” among the women they interviewed. Mothers, they report, “are harshly critical of other parents who buy…extras for themselves” rather than their children. Indeed, they found that a mother risked “social censure if she has nicer clothing than her children.”

Policy-makers are certainly paying attention to the gender of money. Microcredit organizations and conditional cash transfer experiments like Mexico’s Oportunidades regularly rely on women’s distinctive spending patterns, and programs targeting women have recently sprung up in Egypt and Pakistan. In a recent book, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn offer their own rationale for supporting women-centered poverty policies in developing countries: “Some of the most wretched suffering,” they write, “is caused not just by low incomes, but also by unwise spending–by men.”

There is promise in gendered policies, but they don’t offer a full solution. Focusing only on private spending diverts attention away from crucial structural issues of inequality. A worrisome tradition persists in blaming poverty on the poor for allegedly misguided spending choices. Programs that focus on encouraging improved household spending practices therefore should operate along with broader policies providing income support for families and increased labor market opportunities, as well as wage parity for women. And rather than demonize spendthrift fathers, we should investigate when, how and why fathers’ budgeting becomes more similar to mothers’ budgeting. How do patterns change, for instance, in the case of full-time custodial dads?

Monday, October 3, 2011

If there are local websites and forums, then it’s a great idea to get your business participating on them.This continues to bring home to Google the relevance of your business to a specific area, especially if you’re able to include links to your website (be very careful not to spam social communities, though).

2. Make Your Mark on Google Places

Getting listed on Google Places is free for businesses and lets people searching both Google and Google Maps see details of your organization.

You can list your address, number, and website, and users can leave reviews of your services (so it goes without saying you need to be a company that leaves customers satisfied to get the most out of this).

But, just like the regular Google results pages, ranking can be hard. After all, there will be hundreds of firms wanting to appear under a search for “plumbers in London.”

Make sure the information on your listing is accurate and matches that on your site.Invite happy customers to add reviews to your listing so Google can be confident it’s offering searchers a useful business.

Normal SEO tactics also work: aim to develop plenty of links pointing at your site, using your location in the hyperlink if possible, and it’s also good to get other local websites to link to you.

3. Update Your WHOIS Info

Is your domain name registered with your current business address? Some experts believe that Google takes this information into account when considering which websites to rank for local searches, so it’s worth checking.

You can easily update incorrect information through your registrar account, making this a simple first step towards geo-specific optimizing your services website.

4. Get Involved in Your (Offline) Community

If your business can get active in your local area, perhaps by supporting local charitable endeavors or participating in community campaigns, you’re more likely to get local press coverage.

These stories will go on the newspaper’s website, further highlighting your relevance to the local area.

5. Don’t Forget the Other Engines

Google may have the lion’s share of the market, but that doesn’t mean it’s all you need to consider.

Yahoo Local and Bing Maps also feed customers to local businesses, so make sure you dedicate some time to your profile in these listings too.

6. Incentivize Positive Reviews

Anyone using the web to find local services is also likely to look up reviews to determine which company to use.

In addition to review sites, Google includes reviews on businesses’ Places listings. This makes it hard to hide from unhappy customers and will affect how much traffic lands on your pages via your Places listing.

If you can encourage happy customers to review your local services then that can make a big difference.

7. Consider Using Multiple Domains

For international businesses that provide local services, it can be a tough decision choosing whether to use multiple domains, subdomains, or subfolders on your website, as there are different SEO benefits to each.

However, if ranking in local search is of primary importance, then it’s worth considering multiple domains. Google and other search engines will look at your top level domain to see if your site is relevant to a country.

If you’re using a generic domain, such as .com, you can set your geo-targeting using Google’s webmaster console.

8. Look Beyond Google

When people want to look for a local service, Google isn’t necessarily the first place they think to look.

In fact, many people will automatically turn to Yell.com or other business-listings websites. Make sure your business has a presence beyond the “traditional” search engines. They are the first port of call for most people, but not all of them.

9. Give Prominence to Your Contact Details

It’s important to give real prominence on your website to any terms you want to rank for. If you want to rank highly for a specific service in a specific area, then it’s a good idea to give a prominent position to your address.

Mention your location naturally throughout your website’s copy, so the search engines can see that your pages are associated with a specific place or region.

10. Don’t Alienate Nationwide Customers

Some businesses also provide services on a national basis, so this can all be a balancing act. If you’re in this position, ensure you also highlight that you offer your service across the country and not just locally. This will help you avoid alienating potential customers from further afield.

For example, if you’re an accountant in North London, you might want to include information on your pages like “North London-based XYZ Accountancy offers its services nationally.” That way, you’re including your location while assuring non-local customers that you’re also available to them.